Reference: Students were to consult at least one resource within each of the reference categories listed

Compose: Students needed to communicate what they had learned about their personal and social identity

Present: An edited version needed to presented to the class – the cone of silence refers to the agreement that anything of a personal nature that’s discussed in Society & Culture does not go beyond the classroom

It was a very successful project with most students engaged and deeply involved with the process. A minority took the more self-directed style of learning as an opportunity to do little.

Other issues included:

The word ‘explore’ – students didn’t understand that these were the concepts needed to be investigated, even after verbal explanation – this will need refinement for next time

Explicitly asking questions meant students were inclined to approach the project as a typical Q & A worksheet, answering the questions superficially because they hadn’t investigated the concepts first

Some of the items on the reference list did not have a clear link to the project at hand – conducting background research to place subject into context needs to be taught clearly

Many students decided to do a PowerPoint (not listed) but generally did it well, some learned how to use Prezi for the first time, some did scrap-books, others did blog posts and the work avoiders wrote out a speech.

Overall, they really learned a lot about the concepts and terms in a meaningful way because they applied it to themselves and there is nobody they know better.

I was then away with my Innovative Learning Team on and off for a couple of weeks so during this time students completed more traditional textbook and video worksheets.

They also watched Yolngu Boy (link includes comprehensive educational resources), followed by an essay completed in test conditions. The students’ attitude towards this essay made me quite irate. Many held the opinion that since it wasn’t an assessment task “it didn’t count”. That earned them a little lecture on what school and education and learning was about. A singular focus on HSC marks makes me mad! Despite this attitude or because of my tirade the students produced some excellent essays.

Finally, for this unit, students were given a Research Assessment Task to perform primary research (questionnaire or interview) to compare their identity development to others (questionnaire) or another (interview). Unfortunately many students completely forgot all the concepts they had learned from the Who Are You project, the textbook, the videos and from the Yolngu Boy essay in which students had included concepts quite well. All these tasks had been scaffolded so the concepts were reasonably clear but the link of the concepts to the title of the unit, Personal and Social Identity, obviously hadn’t been made strong enough. These research assessment tasks were mainly written as if personality equated to identity. *sigh*

All that been said, I still think the program is a good one. Next year the plan is to make the Who Am I project and the Research Assessment Task into one big assessment task with some tweaking. I want to drop the textbook part altogether but part of the reason it was included was to placate a parent that believes my teaching methods lack the rigour required for the HSC. You see, I made the mistake at parent-teacher night of saying we had been having fun in the course and hadn’t taught to the test (the first assessment task). Obviously I should wash my mouth out with soap!

We are all human, students, teachers and even parents. I know my students have learned much about themselves and others from this unit. Hopefully their learning will also be reflected in HSC results in a year and a half’s time.

The PPP Policy Proposal: A proposal to improve HSC assessment by introducing externally marked Projects, Portfolios or Performances for all subjects

For my very last subject in my Masters of Arts (Writing and Literature) I chose to break away from the creative writing courses (fiction and non-fiction) and study Public Policy Analysis. I teach Economics and thought it would be relevant in that regard. There is much about the course I haven’t liked but the assessments themselves have been thought provoking. My last assignment (ever?) is to write a 3000 word policy proposal in a prescribed format. After some discussion on Twitter I settled on reducing the reliance on exams for HSC assessment, partly due to inspiration provided by @cpaterso. I have now completed The PPP Policy Proposal (pdf file – don’t want to fuss with style conversion from Word to Blog). Enjoy!

Disclaimers:

(1) There is a little political hyperbole within this policy proposal

(2) It is within the constraints of a university assignment. Eg Convenor wanted only one paragraph in the Evaluation section and limited to 3000 words in total (I took this to mean not including the Reference List and Appendices)

Last year, according to the NSW Board of Studies, approximately 16,000 students sat the HSC Business Studies Examination, making it a very lucrative market for textbook publishers to snare. Due to a new syllabus being issued for Business Studies in 2011, there is a new batch of textbooks vying for a place on school booklists. It is my job to make that selection for our students. However, I am tempted to not use a textbook at all. I teach in a technology rich environment where students are able to use a range of resources so I’m finding it increasingly hard to justify the purchase of one expensive textbook.

In the last decade our Business studies students have used three different versions of a Preliminary Business Studies textbook. The first one we used was published by Longman (since absorbed into Pearson Publishing) and written by Sykes, Hansen and Codsi. It contained good case studies and diagrams but it was too wordy. Then we switched to the Leading Edge version by Robert Barlow and Kate Dally because it was easy reading and had a fantastic workbook to accompany it. However, the text lacked substance so for the last few years we have used Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman and Natalie Devenish, originally under the Wiley label, but now under its Australian school division, Jacaranda. There are sections in this textbook which are too complicated and other areas which could have a little more detail, but overall it has just the right level of depth for our students. During this time our worksheets and teaching programs have settled into a nice partnership with this textbook but that is about to change.

The first publisher to woo me was Jacaranda with an emailed invitation to a workshop. The main author of Business Studies in Action, Stephen Chapman, is an excellent presenter through his knowledge and engaging real life stories from the classroom so I accepted the invitation.

The workshop was useful for providing an overview of the new syllabus and discussing some ideas with other teachers regarding implementation in the classroom. The textbook appears professional with engaging photographs and a clear and colourful layout. Chapman attempts to make students think like business people, particularly with the What would you do section at the start of each chapter. This supports my Business Studies class motto of ‘keeping it real’. I encourage students to treat their studies not as school work but as preparation for actually running a business one day.

Jacaranda offers an online supplement to the textbook including case studies, worksheets and crosswords. Although this website is still being developed I am surprised it doesn’t have what could be called truly interactive and engaging resources, other than the major business plan project. The project involves video and a range of images to grab students’ attention but really requires the finesse and sophistication that students now encounter on a regular basis online. For instance there is no provision for networking within the group version of the project. The ‘jacaranda plus’ website is the feature Jacaranda is pushing the most but from my school’s highly technological perspective it isn’t a very appealing aspect.

Soon after I attended the Jacaranda workshop a friendly saleswoman from Pearson visited my school. The Business Studies textbook she showed me looked like it was merely a hatchet job of the existing version with the same old style of activities, few pictures and a dated colour palette of dark cyan and purple. It also has online support but similarly to the Jacaranda website it fails to live up to its hype. Pearson have now also organised a workshop but there is little point in me attending another one.

In a school immersed in technology such as mine, we are moving away from traditional textbooks and using increasingly more online resources. Online content is generally included in the exorbitant price charged for textbooks but if teachers only want the online component it is still very expensive. To go without textbooks and only use the online component, Pearson have said it would be 70% of the cost of the textbook per student. It would be better if publishers broke their online content into components with small fees for each part. Teachers could then use only the most suitable aspects for their classes. Parents are understandably not amused at paying over $60 for a textbook to only have it used a small amount in class.

That said, due to time constraints, I have chosen Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman to be on our booklist for Year 11 students next year. There is a distinct cultural change occurring in the teaching and learning environment. The students are ready, my school is ready but the publishers and some teachers are not. I am hoping that this time next year I will have constructed a program and negotiated an arrangement with publishers so that we don’t need to commit to just one textbook for the course. There is no one definitive source of knowledge and it is time classrooms and publishers adapted.